Rick Rubin hints second half of Kanye West’s ‘Yeezus’ on its way

Executive producer spent two hectic weeks re-working the rapper's new album

Rick Rubin has hinted at the possibility that Kanye West could release an album containing off-cuts from his new album ‘Yeezus’.

Rubin, who was the executive producer on the rapper’s chart-topping new record, revealed that he cut the album down from sixteen songs to the final 10 and said West may release the lost tracks.

Speaking about the day Kanye West brought the album to him, Rubin told The Daily Beast: “Before he even asked me to work on it, I said, ‘Maybe you should make it more concise. Maybe this is two albums. Maybe this is just the first half.”

He added: “That was one of the first breakthroughs. Kanye was like, ‘That’s what I came here today to hear! It could be 10 songs!” Asked if that means a second half to ‘Yeezus’ was on its way, Rubin replied: “Maybe.”

The veteran producer also revealed how he didn’t think it would be possible to finish ‘Yeezus’, after Kanye West gave him just five weeks to turn “three and a half hours of works in progress” into a “focused” album.

He said: “To me it seemed impossible what he was asking. I remember I wasn’t feeling that well that day, and I was thinking, ‘Is the music making me sick? I don’t feel good about this. We ended up working probably 15 days, 16 days, long hours, no days off, 15 hours a day. I was panicked the whole time.”

However, Rubin’s hard-work appears to have paid off as ‘Yeezus’ debuted on the US Billboard 200 at Number One. It marks the rapper’s sixth straight No 1 album in the US, with only his debut ‘College Dropout’ in 2004 failing to hit the top spot. As well as reaching No 1, ‘Yeezus’ also scored the third-highest opening week sales of 2013, selling 327,000 copies in a week. It was also No 1 in the UK.